Carbon Monoxide Alarms: Protecting You from Poisonous Gas in Your Home

Carbon Monoxide Alarms: Protecting You from Poisonous Gas in Your Home

Increasingly, state laws have been mandating that every home have carbon monoxide alarms on each level of the house. These security detectors are able to detect the presence of carbon monoxide gas, which has no smell, no taste, no color, and is something that the human eye cannot see. This would seem unnecessary but for the fact that carbon monoxide (CO) can kill you! So there is a great need for CO alarms in home security systems to ensure that our safety and health continue in the places we call home.

Dangers of CO

Carbon monoxide works the way it does because it combines with hemoglobin in the human body, creating a compound called carboxyhemoglobin. Carboxyhemoglobin, now in the place of hemoglobin, cannot process oxygen the way hemoglobin does, and so it stops the bloodstream’s only way of bringing oxygen to all the cells and systems of the body. The results are disastrous when high concentrations of CO are present; death can result in less than three minutes if there’s enough CO in the air, converting the hemoglobin in the blood so that the body’s cells don’t get their life-sustaining oxygen. Even if death is not the consequence, CO poisoning can cause everything from minor headaches and flu-like symptoms to seizures, coma, dementia, heart problems, and long-term neurological complications. Therefore, having CO detectors in the home to warn you when there is an unusually high concentration of carbon monoxide can quite literally save your life.

Causes of CO in the Home

As it is caused by the incomplete burning of fuel, there is carbon monoxide everywhere. In small concentrations like in our atmosphere, it can’t kill us. But in large concentrations like those produced by a wood fire, you can be dead in a half an hour. That is the reason why we need to be aware of the causes of CO in the home, so that we can be careful not to let it collect in enclosed rooms. Any device that burns fuel in your home causes carbon monoxide, including kitchen appliances, gas stoves, ovens, propane, kerosene, space heaters, wood fires in your fireplace, your car’s engine in the garage, and more. Because it’s not reasonable to stop using these items, you should just be careful about how you use them. Your CO detector can warn you when the concentration gets higher than it should, but it’s still smart to limit your production of it. Don’t idle a car engine in the garage, have your heaters checked at least annually, use devices according to manual instructions, etc. Keeping rooms well ventilated will make a huge difference in the regulation of carbon monoxide pollution in the air quality in your home.

When you have carbon monoxide alarms correctly installed in your home, you can be safe from stressing over whether or not you will ever have to suffer the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning. Let your home be a safe place for you by installing these security devices so that you can be forewarned of emergencies before they become critical.